Uses and Gratifications Theory

USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORYThe uses and gratification perspectives takes the interpret of the media consumer. It examines how peopleuse the media and the gratification they seek and receive from their media behaviors. Uses andgratification researchers carry that audience that audience members are cognizant of and can articulatetheir reasons for consuming various media content.HistoryThe uses and gratifications b methodicalness on has its roots in the 1940s when researchers became concerned inwhy people engaged in various forms of media behaviour, such as tuner earreach or newspaper interlingual rendition. These early studies were in the first place descriptive, seeking to classify the responses of audience membersinto meaty categories. For example, Herzog in 1944 identified three types of gratificationassociated with earshot to radio soap, operas emotional release, wishful intellection and obtaining advice.Berelson in 1949 took advantage of a new(a) York news paper stri ke to adopt people why they read thepaper, the responses disappear into five major categories reading for information, reading for social prestige,reading for escape, reading as a tool for daily living, and reading for a social context. These earlystudies had little theoretical cohesion in fact many were providential by the practical needs of newspaperpublishers and radio broadcasters to know the motivations of their audience in order to serve them moreefficiently.The next step in the development of this research began during the late mid-fifties and continued during intothe 1960s, in this phase the accent mark was on identifying and operationalizing the many social andpsychological variables that were presumed to the antecedents of un exchangeable patterns of consumption andgratification. Wilbur Schramm in 1954 asked the question, what determines which offerings of mass communicationwill be selected by a given individualist? the answer he offered is called the fraction of se lection, and itlooks like